Moneyball without the ball

Week 10: Back above Par

by Lsigurd on September 11, 2011

While the markets continue to shake and shudder, my 10 week old tracking portfolio put in a yeoman performance last week, bucking the trend and returning to the black. In the period since my portfolios inception (July 1st, 2011) the TSX is down 7.1% and the S&P is down 13.8%. So on a relative performance basis I am doing ok. I would like to be able to make money again some day though. Of course, that is difficult when it seems that the best place to put your money is in cash.

I made one trade last week. I bought Collosus Minerals. Its hard not to be enticed by the momentum of the gold stocks. In my actual portfolio I did more tweaking by reducing my positions a bit further in Arcan and Equal. As I have said before I will not tweak in this practice portfolio because the commissions are too high. In my actual accounts I also increased my banking hedge by adding to shorts of Bank of America and UBS.

In a related note, Don Coxe had an excellent conference call this week. He is finally beginning to see Europe as negatively as I am. He is also still a strong believer in gold. Its worth a listen.